About Me

Friday, July 26, 2013

When I was
young and I wanted something I would always try and talk my parents
into it. I never asked a direct question but always came at it
in a round-about way. My mother used say I was like a crab the
way I would come at things. Most children just seem to keep
asking the direct question until the parents are worn out, as I’m
sure many of you are familiar with. Please can we go to the
beach? Please can we go to the beach? Please can we go to
the beach? It’s interesting that in this Gospel Jesus more or
less tells us not to be afraid to pester him in this way when we are
praying for something. Keep asking and don’t be afraid to
ask.

A common
difficulty for most of us is that we continually wonder if God is
answering our prayers. So often I’ve heard people say that
they have prayed for such and such a thing but God hasn’t listened,
or answered. Is this true? Not if what Jesus says to us
is true; and of course we believe that He only speaks the truth.
‘Ask and you will receive’; not might receive, but will
receive. I suppose the problem lies in the fact that we often
don’t recognise the way that God answers us. God always
answers us but we may not even be aware of what God has done or is
doing.

During my
teenage years I lost interest in the practice of my faith just like
many of my peers, although I still believed in God. When I was
nineteen I remember thinking at one stage that I wanted to find out
whether this was real or not. I didn’t just want to drift
aimlessly. A few days before I turned nineteen a close friend
of mine was killed in a car accident. This was a terrible shock
to me because it was the first real encounter I had with death and it
made me ask a lot of questions. At the end of the summer of
that same year I came across a book called Power for Living.
This was a series of testimonies of other people who had come back to
God and whose faith meant a lot to them. Each one described how
they had come to have a very real relationship with God which was now
at the centre of their lives. At the end of the book it said:
‘If you want to discover God in your life, then ask him now
wherever you are to come into your life and make himself known to
you.’ I remember sitting at the end of my bed and saying, ‘Ok
Lord, if you are there help me to find you.’ And then I put
the book away and forgot all about it. I could
never have imagined what was to follow.

A few weeks
later I met a friend of mine called Aidan, who told me about a mutual
friend of ours called Louise who had been to Medjugorje and had
rediscovered her faith, or as Aidan put it: ‘She has become all
religious and holy.’ I was intrigued, because Louise was my
own age and from a similar background. So I called around to
her and asked her about it. I remember she talked for about an
hour and a half about what had happened. At the end of the
conversation she invited me to come to a prayer meeting. Now I
wasn’t that keen to go to a prayer meeting. I thought I was
much too cool for such things. But Louise was smart enough to
know that and she asked another girl whom I fancied, to ask me.
Naturally I went! Both of those girls are now married and I’m
a priest!

So I went
along to this prayer meeting and I was very surprised to find 50 or
60 young people there praying the rosary, singing hymns and reading
the Bible. This was totally new to me. I remember
thinking that these people had something that I wanted. It was
obvious that their faith was real; none of them had to be there and
so I started coming back each week.

Several weeks
after I began attending this prayer group they had what is called a
‘Life in the Spirit’ seminar, where they give talks about the
reality of the Holy Spirit and the difference it can make in your
life. On the fifth night they pray with each person to have an
experience of God’s Spirit, just as the Apostles did. I was
really looking forward to this and wondering what would happen.
My family were also looking on nervously and hoping this wouldn’t
be a disaster. After the people prayed with me I was
disappointed because nothing extraordinary seemed to happen.
But in the days and weeks that followed many things began to happen.
It was as if someone plugged in my faith and switched on the power.
Suddenly I had a tremendous desire to pray and read the Bible.
The words of the Bible began to come alive for me in a way I had
never experienced before and also the mass came alive for me.
It was as if I was hearing it for the first time. Three years
later I began studying to be a priest.

I could never
have imagined how God was going to reach out to me and change my life
that time I prayed to him sitting on the end of my bed. God
does answer us, but often not in the way we expect.

Friday, July 19, 2013

A
few years ago something like 21 people working for French Telecom
took their own lives. The company finally began to take a
serious look at what was going wrong and realised that they were just
pushing their employees too hard and they couldn’t take it anymore.
So the company began to change their work policy and take some
of the pressure off. It is terrible that it would come to that,
but I think it is also a good reminder that we are not machines
and we are not just meant to be worked to death. Apparently
something similar has been happening in China where many people were also
being pushed too hard and there is a high rate of suicide. We are not machines; we are body and spirit and both aspects of the person need to be looked after if we are to remain healthy.

Much
of our society has gone like this, working ‘like the hammers of
hell,’ as the expression goes. We often don’t seem to know when to
stop, or even how to stop. And now because Sunday is a shopping
day there seems to be no beginning or end to the week. Business
people will tell you that (in Ireland at least) Sunday is now the busiest shopping day of
the week. Even apart from a religious point of
view, this cannot be good for us because we need to be able to rest,
to just stop and do nothing. We are not machines.

‘Martha,
Martha, you worry and fret about so many things.’ Look at
what Martha was saying to Jesus. ‘Can’t you see how much
work there is to be done? Tell my sister to be busy too.
She shouldn’t just be sitting there.’ But Jesus’ reply is
interesting. He says that only one thing is necessary.
He doesn’t just say that there is nothing wrong with her sitting
and listening to him; he says it is necessary
and that she shouldn’t be stopped from doing that. Stopping
and listening is not just a nice idea, but it is necessary. Why
is it so important?

There
is an order to God’s creation. It will work a certain way and
the Lord knows what we are able for much better than we do. The
third commandment that God gave us is to keep the Sabbath/Sunday
holy. It is to be a day of rest, where God is remembered, where
God is given priority; but also a day where we can rest and recover
because we need it ourselves.

When
the people of Israel (who represent all of us) were wandering through
the desert, initially they had nothing to eat. So God provided
them with manna, a food that they could collect each day. This
sustained them each day. But He also told them that they should
go out and collect each day just enough for that day; but on the day
before the Sabbath they should also collect enough for the Sabbath,
so that they could rest and give God priority that day. To put
it in modern English, He said, ‘Do enough shopping on Saturday so
that you don’t have to go shopping on Sunday.’ Sunday is to
be a day of rest from unnecessary work, where we can worship God,
relax, take a walk with family or friends. Why? Because we need
it. It is necessary for our sanity. It is part of the
order that God created. God is well aware of what we need most,
because God created us.

God
also asks us to rest so that we can continually learn how to listen
to him. I often hear people say that they wish God would speak
to them more. The truth is that God is speaking to us all the
time, but mostly we are not listening. To a large degree we
don’t even know how to listen any more, because we have gotten used
to being so busy and having so much noise around us all the time.

You
might be thinking that that is just how society has gone now and we
should get used to it. But if we are
following the way of Christ as we say we are, then we need to listen
to what God is saying to us, even if the rest of society doesn’t.
Christians have always been different and we will be different if we
follow the path that God shows us. We have to ask ourselves,
‘Do I believe in this or not?’ Do I believe this is what
God is saying to us or not? If we believe this—as we say we
do—then we need to listen to what God asks of us and follow his
directions, because they are there to help us. The order that
God has given his creation is not to make life difficult, but to
help us blossom because God knows better than any of us what will
help us grow.

Martha, Martha, you worry and fret about so many things;
only one thing is necessary. It is Mary who has chosen the
better part; it is not to be taken from her.

Saturday, July 13, 2013

Recently I
was shopping in a big department store here in Sarasota, and it was
my second time there in a few days (I nearly always end up having to
change things!). The second time I was there a young man came
up to me and asked me if I was a religious minister of some kind.
He had helped me the first time too. I told him I was a
Catholic priest and he wanted to know if he could ask me something.
So I said, ‘sure!’ He said, ‘What do you think is the
best way to deal with people begging on the street?’ I smiled
when he asked me this and I told him it is one of the more difficult
things we are continually faced with and there is never an easy
answer to it.

I know from speaking to social workers and people
who work with the homeless that more often than not you don’t
really help people on the street when you give them money. You
are often feeding an addiction of some kind. Having said that
they are obviously a lot worse off than me, no matter how you figure
it which makes it all the more difficult to pass by. We are
told many times in the Scriptures that the poor will always be with
us (Mk 14:7, Mt 26:11, Jn 12: 8, Deut 15:11) and we have a duty to
look after them, but we must also be wise as to what is the best way
to help. However, without a doubt the most important thing is
that we treat each person we meet with dignity. Whether we decide to give money or not to someone begging doesn’t mean we
cannot smile or acknowledge them. They are people that will be
with us in heaven hopefully. Just because things haven’t
worked out well for them now doesn’t mean it won’t change.
We have a duty to look after them.

A temptation
in many cities today is to ‘hide’ the poor, keep them out of
sight, because we don’t like the ‘messiness’ of people begging
and the discomfort that this causes. However, the Lord has
given us these people to care for too and they have just as much a
right to be part of our towns as we do. Just because it doesn’t
suit us is no reason to ignore them. Remember the story of the
rich man and Lazarus the beggar at his gates (See Luke 16:19-31).
The rich man was condemned, not because he was wealthy but because he
ignored the poor man who was right under his nose.

In today’s
Gospel we are shown something interesting. First when the man
asks Jesus what he must do to get to heaven, Jesus tells him to keep
the commandments, firstly to love God with our heart, mind and soul
and secondly to love our neighbor as ourself. The order is
important. Then when he asks Jesus, ‘But who is my neighbor,’
Jesus tells him the story of the good Samaritan. Something that
we may not appreciate from the story is how much the Samaritans were
despised by the Jewish people. They could see absolutely no
good in them. Jesus was showing them (and us today) that
goodness can be found in everyone, even in people we despise or may
be prejudiced against. The people who were expected to do good
(the priest and Levite) did not, and the last person on earth that
they would have considered good did the most loving thing of all.
But perhaps the key to the story is the commandments that Jesus
quoted and the order that they come in. Our first duty is to
love God above all else. Only then are we called to love our
neigbour. Why? Because the strength we get to love our neighbor
comes from our relationship with God. The closer we remain to
God, or the more our relationship with God grows, the more we are
able to see those around us who are in need and help them. Our
neighbor is simply whoever is in need of help, even if they despise
us or believe quite differently to us.

It is
interesting that Mother Teresa of Calcutta and her sisters
continually take people in off the street to allow them to die with
dignity. They clean them up and they look after them as best
they can, but they don’t try to convert them. Most of them
would be Hindu or Muslim. They simply love them and treat them
with dignity. They are able to do that because they love God
first and that is where their strength and inspiration comes from.
Needless to say they speak more about God by their actions than
anything they could possibly say.

‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your strength. And you must love your neighbor as yourself.’

Saturday, July 6, 2013

I have always
been curious about the fact that when soldiers are dying on the
battle field, they will often start crying out for their mother.
In spite of all the training to be tough and ruthless, they end up
calling for the one who can comfort them. In times of crisis
instincts come to the surface. And as you know, when a child is
small the first place it will go when anything is wrong, is to its
mother and bury its head in its mother’s lap. Our instinct
tells us that we will find comfort in our mothers, and we do. I
also love to hear on the radio all the requests for ‘the best
mother in the world’. There are a lot of them out there and
it is always lovely to hear people talking about their mothers this
way. In the first
reading today we are given this beautiful image. God tells us
that He will comfort us, just as a mother comforts her child.
But what is God comforting us from, or for?

When we begin
to live a new way of life, such as married life, or religious life, or indeed when we just launch out on our career, we start off full of zeal. It is exciting and so it should be.
But before long various weaknesses start to come to the surface that
maybe we thought were gone, or that we didn’t realise were there at
all. In religious life it may be that our prayer life seems
to dry up and we begin to discover that the
community are not so easy to live with. People often begin to
doubt if they are able for religious life at all. This is where
a bit of direction from someone who is further down the line is very
important. I know that similar things happen in married life, but in a
different way. You begin to notice that the other person has a
whole lot of weaknesses that you didn’t know about before, perhaps
even something as destructive as an addiction. What is
happening? What is happening is that the Lord is helping us to
grow up. He is beginning to show us what we are really like.

Probably the hardest part for any of us when we are faced with the
darker side of ourselves is to learn to accept the fact that we are
far from perfect and that we will always struggle with weakness.
This is the human condition, but it is ok to be like that.

There are two
ways that we can react. We can deny that there is a problem and
fight on with clenched fists (‘white knuckling’), although this will eventually destroy
us; or we can admit that there is a problem and that the solution
lies in turning to one greater than ourselves; namely God. This
is what the 12 step program of Alcoholics Anonymous and all the other addictions is all about.
It is the whole spiritual life summed up in twelve steps. We
are powerless over our weakness and we need to turn to one greater
than ourselves, who can and will help us. That is why it is so successful.

I think that
the hardest part for any of us, is to accept the fact that we are as
weak as we are; and yet ironically that is also the key to coping
with it. God allows us to see what we are like, so that we can
turn to him and realise that God is the one who can help us.
Yes we are weak, and it is very frustrating, but God is not put off
by our weakness. If we can accept that, then we will grow and
we will learn to be at peace.

We are often
given the impression that very holy people are basically people who
have overcome all their weaknesses, or who never had any sins; but this is not true. Holy people are the ones who have learned that they are weak, but
that they can be at peace as long as they continually turn to God.
Our strength lies in God. This is what the Lord means when He
tells us that He will comfort us just as a mother comforts her
child. Our weaknesses are not a problem for God, although they
can be very frustrating for us. The comfort we receive from God
is in realising that the Lord is just as much with us in our weakness
as at any other time. St. Paul also says this in the second reading: 'May I never boast of anything except in the cross of Our Lord Jesus Christ.'

One of the most powerful things the Lord has given us to help us cope with the weaknesses that we have to face is the gift of confession. Each time we come to the Lord in confession we are not only unburdened of our sins but also encouraged to keep
going and not give up. It is one of the
lovely ways the Lord has given us to help us to be at peace.
Through confession we are able to keep coming back to the Lord and be
assured that the Lord is with us. He knows we struggle.
He knows we are weak and that it is difficult for us and that is why
He invites us to take comfort in him. Spiritually, you could say, the
Lord is the one we turn to for a hug. Then we can also be united to Jesus each time we receive the Eucharist, again to strengthen and comfort us. That is why He gives himself to us.

The key to
growing and blossoming as people, is not to be afraid of our weakness, but to turn to the one who can and will help us
with them. He will help us to be at peace.